The
Christmas stories in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke are not meant
to be literal history, like, let us say, detailed descriptions of the Battle
of Gettysburg. Rather they are theological stories designed to tell us that
with the birth of Jesus a new phase of the history of humankind had begun.
The stories may not be true in all their details but they are True in the
sense that they disclose to us a sudden, dramatic, and total transformation
in the human condition.

As John Shea says in his book Starlight, we discover
at Christmas, not only the light that is God and the light that Jesus came
to bring to the world, but the light that is and has always been in us
because we are creatures who share in the light of God, beings in whom the
spark of God's light and love has always shone.

Christmas reveals to us that
like Mary and Joseph we too can be the light of the world and that indeed
our own frail and often dim lights are not completely discontinuous from the
light of Jesus, from the starlight that shone at Bethlehem.

Once
upon a time there was a little girl named Jeanne Marie who was afraid of the
dark. She wouldnít go to sleep at night unless all the lights in her room
were on. You couldnít never tell, she argued, whoíd sneak into her room at
night if it were dark. She absolutely refused to go into her closet because,
like the boy in comics several years ago, she thought monsters might lurk in
the closet especially at night. She claimed that she could hear the monsters
talking about what they were going to do to her. Although she like snow, she
hated winter because it was dark so much of the time. She didnít like to go
off to the country for vacation because there were no street lights and the
dark was very scary indeed. The monsters who had hidden in her closet now
wandered the streets of the summer village and lurked in the woods. She was
frightened when she went to the movies because the theaters were too dark.
Her mother said to her once arenít you old enough now not to be afraid of
the dark. She said, no, the older she got the more reasons she should think
of for being afraid of the dark.

She came home from school one day with the
story of the midnight sun in Sweden in the summer. Lets live there, she
said. But in the winter the sun hardly ever shines there, her mommy said.
Well, where does it go. To the South Pole. Well, lets live there. Itís too
cold. I donít care, so long as itís not dark. Then one day her mommy and
daddy took her to midnight Mass in the church. It was totally dark inside.
Jeanne Marie was terrified. Then the priest flicked the switch and the
church was filled with light. Oh, said Jeanne Marie, itís so pretty. Light
always comes on, doesnít it mommy? If you wait long enough.

Psalms 146:5-10

5 Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose
hope is in the LORD his God,
6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps
faith for ever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The
LORD sets the prisoners free;
8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are
bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD watches over the sojourners, he upholds the widow and the
fatherless; but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10 The LORD will reign for ever, thy God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!